True Peak Metering - Is Your Loudness Meter Lying to You? (part 2/2)
- Kiloeve Reviews
- May 15, 2021
- 3 min read
Continuation on Level Metering
If you haven’t seen the first post on the previous two loudness metres, please see those first as the points mentioned about LEVELs and the conclusion go hand in hand with those mentioned previously.
Mastering the Mix’s LEVELS
Finally, in LEVELS, not only are the readings more harsh towards the ‘mistakes’ you make in your mixes and masters, but it can also show you the levels of bass in your music. However, their algorithm asks you to mute the kick and bass to get a more critical suggestion of how to organise your low end. This may be because the kick, snare, and the bass, for example, are more subjective choices, depending on the type of genre you make. Additional presets for different formats, and a more detailed stereo width certainly makes it worth giving the plugin a trial run, at least. It certainly feels more transparent with RMS level, as the other two appear lower in the red (distortion).
Discipline
If there is an issue in your composition, mix or master, LEVELS will light the specific issue in red, and sometimes just clicking on it to make it green, or ‘right’ doesn’t work and you have to restart the track. This gets you into the habit of fixing the issues before playing the track again and seeing if any of the six aspects turn red. Not all of these are set in stone and the frequency, loudness, etc, should be subjective according to taste and genre of the music.
LEVELS - True Peak Reading
Basilisk Boss Battle shows +0.1 dBFs on LEVELS meter
In these three examples, you can see that the meterings for LEVELs and Youlean show an identical number in the true peaks. Although results can vary song to song, these identical results illustrates a telltale sign that Logic’s true peak readings are incorrect. Mastering the Mix and MixbusTv goes into more depth on the DAC conversion which causes the many different readings and inaccuracy.
What’s with the fuss about RMS Level and True Peaks? Don’t we use LUFS now?
At a time where radio and streaming platforms are obsessing over loudness normalisation, knowing what happens to your music when it translates into the real world may be another important thing for you to be aware of, especially with sub-standard DAC converters, (i.e low quality speakers that have audio crackling). LUFS integrated loudness is a more accurate loudness measurement for how we perceive loudness, which in turn, becomes much more subjective than measuring with RMS and True Peaks.
Headroom vs Dynamic Range
It can be argued that distortion can often sound nice in certain genres, such as rock and EDM. It is true that, if done well, the distortion may not even be heard in the first place or sound like distortion at all. Colouring and aesthetics may be part of the genre, and so whether you choose to stay in the red, enter the red or avoid it at all costs, it is something that you should decide at the end of the day.
Do What Sounds Best to Your Ears
The most important part is that you know that you are fully conscious or fully aware of your levels, frequency content, headroom and dynamics. You don’t have to worry about headroom so much, as long as it sounds right to your audience and you know you are making an impactful, memorable track. Use your ears, but take the varying results from these loudness meters with a pinch of salt.
Conclusion
Don’t use your DAW’s true peak meters, especially Logic’s. If you are worried about distortion, treat the harshest meter you have (i.e LEVELs, Youlean, etc) as the correct peak metering plugins, if you don’t want your speakers to crackle. Again, use your ears as well. Objectively, distortion can be a good thing, but even better, having an awareness of the numbers will give you that final confirmation that your music is phenomenal!
Thank you for reading my first article about loudness meters. I cannot wait to produce to you my next article, of which I will discuss the benefits of using character-driven and transparent limiters in your mix and masters.
-Alex [KiloeveReviews]
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